1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to document formats and more particularly to a method for automatically formatting documents in a computer system.
2. Description of Related Art
Different types of documents are frequently formatted in a different way. For example, letters, articles, and books have normally a different layout, that means a different format. There are several possibilities to apply a certain format to a document. The easiest way is to give the different passages in the document a certain format during the creation of the document, for example, headlines, which were formatted in a different type of characters.
It is also possible to apply the format after the document has been created, that means to create the document in a standard format and to apply the final format after the document itself, for example the text, has been set out. There exist office applications, which allow the user to employ an automatic formatting function for automatically formatting the document.
Such automatic formatting functions identify for each document portion, for example, for each chapter of a text document, the required format and apply that format to each document portion. This identification of the format required for a certain document portion is effected with the help of one or more identification features, which corresponds to a certain format, constituting a formatting rule. If a certain document portion includes the identification features for a specific formatting rule, the corresponding format has been identified as the required format for this document portion. The connection between identification features and formats, the formatting rules, was laid down in an internal catalog of the computer system. The so identified required format may then be applied immediately to the corresponding document portion.
This kind of automatic formatting lacks efficiency. For example, if the formatting function has applied several different formatting rules and has applied some formatting rules repeatedly the user cannot reject the repeatedly applied formatting rule for all document portions to which it was applied in a single step. To reject one formatting rule, the user has to skip manually through the document and manually reject each formatting action corresponding to this formatting rule.
Furthermore, prior art formatting is frequently not transparent enough, that means the user cannot easily follow or recognize the formatting actions of the automatic formatting function. This leads to additional controlling efforts or to insecurity of the user. That means the prior art automatic formatting functions frequently and in many respects do not meet consumer expectations.
According to the principles of this invention, a method for improved automatic formatting of a document provides easier accepting and rejecting of formatting actions made by the automatic formatting method. In particular, the user inputs a document, or any part of a document, into a computer system without worrying about the formatting. For each document portion that the user wants formatted in a particular way, the user delimits that portion of the document with a unique format identification feature that corresponds to a format rule.
When the user initiates the computer-based automatic formatting method of this invention, the method identifies each document portion in the document delimited by at least one format identification feature, and applies to that document portion a format rule corresponding to the at least one format identification feature.
The method displays an indicium of the format rule together with the document portion thereby displaying the format rule and the document portion together. The method then receives a user input accepting or rejecting the displayed format rule. The display together of the document portion and an indicium of the format rule applied to that document portion permits the user to decide easily and unambiguously whether the automatic formatting is desired.
Typically, the method of this invention performs the identifying, applying, and displaying operations for a plurality of document portions with each document portion in the plurality delimited by at least one format identification feature where each different format identification feature has a corresponding format rule. The method also includes filtering the plurality of document portions according to at least one filtering criterion thereby selecting a group of document portions. In this case, the displaying operation comprises displaying each document portion in the group of document portions together with the indicium of the format rule applied to the document portion.
This filtering greatly simplifies the utilization of the automatic formatting method. The user can choose easily to accept or reject a certain kind of applied formatting rules, for example, all formatting rules, and that means all formatting actions regarding headlines. The user is not forced to pick all headline formats one by one from the document and accept or reject them individually. The user does not even have to think about the question, in the headline example, whether a document portion is a headline or not. The user, instead, can rely on the internal table or on the display, which already list the headlines together with the applied formatting rules.
The filter criterion in the filter operation is selected from at least one of the applied formatting rules, the position of the identified document portions in the document, or perhaps a date of first application of one of the format rules to the identified document portions.
Herein, a storage medium comprises a plurality of formatting rules, wherein each of the formatting rules comprises at least one formatting rule specific identification feature and a formatting rule specific format. Each of the formatting rules shall be applied to a document portion if the document portion contains the at least one formatting rule specific identification feature.
In another embodiment, the method according to the present invention comprises:
a) identifying document portions in a document, wherein each of the document portions contains the at least one formatting rule specific identification feature for at least one of a plurality of formatting rules, thereby assigning at least one of the formatting rules to each of the document portions,
b) applying to each of the identified document portions the at least one of the formatting rules assigned to the identified document portion;
c) displaying the applied formatting rules together with the identified document portions, and
d) accepting or rejecting each of the displayed formatting rules for each of the identified document portions according to user input.
In the scope of the present invention, a computer system includes a software application running on the computer system. The software application applies to the identified document portions the assigned one or more formatting rules, that means the software application formats these document portions accordingly. This formatting of the various document portions is done successively, that means document portion per document portion. It may be noted that this formatting technically is a re-formatting, because a format according to a formatting rule is applied to a document, which naturally has some format, namely a standard format. Such a standard format document is considered unformatted in the scope of the present invention.
Each formatting action, that means each application of a formatting rule to a document portion, is listed in an internal table. In this internal table at least information about the applied formatting rules and about the document portions to which each of the formatting rules has been applied are stored. This table reflects the assignment of applied formatting rules to the document portions of the document. In the scope of the present invention, the applied formatting rules are displayed on an output device, for example a monitor of the computer system, together with the identified document portions, that means the document portions to which these formatting rules have been applied. The display together allows, but does not require, a display in the same table or graphical window. It is possible and sufficient to display the formatting rules applied to a certain document portion in a window and to show this document portion in a second window, for example in a background window.
The display of the formatting rules together with the relevant document portions allows the user to accept or reject each formatting action that means each application of a formatting rule to a document portion, by knowing the applied formatting rule from a displayed list. The accepting and rejecting can be affected simply by a mouse-click or, as well, by any other input device and operating scheme.